Top 5 Morning Rituals to Help You Avoid a Bad Day at Work in 2024
How you start, your morning can determine how you approach your workday.
How you start your day can determine the quality of your experience from morning to night.
Rushing, exhausting, and unintentional priming in your first few hours often leads to more of the same as transitioning into the afternoon and evening.
But take the time to put your self-nourishing, digital detox, and energizing daily rituals into practice as soon as you wake up. You can create the necessary conditions for positive emotions and optimal productivity.
Try these five-morning habits to help you avoid a bad day at work and steer yourself toward a great start:
Know 5 Morning Rituals to Help You Avoid a Bad Day at Work
Nurture yourself first
It’s nearly impossible to nurture yourself in the morning and focus on what you need most, especially when caring for a child or other family member.
But if you allow yourself to make “you” the center of your attention for the first hour of the morning, you can go into your day feeling more focused, grounded, and prepared.
If you usually wake up and keep yourself busy, whether checking your phone and social information, cooking for your family, or listening to the news, set your alarm to wake up an hour earlier to create time for thinking, planning and reflection. On a notebook, journal or even a laptop, you can use this hour to:
- Plan your day with notes, priorities and a calendar.
- Take the time to set weekly and monthly goals.
- Brainstorm ideas.
- Plan next steps for personal projects before reviewing work projects.
Take time to meditate
Busy people may need meditation the most but are often the least willing to set aside time in the morning for this “unproductive” form of self-care.
If that describes you, consider the fact that multiple studies from UCLA and the University of Pennsylvania have shown that a specific type of meditation, called Kirtan Kriya meditation, can reduce stress while enhancing memory and cognitive function— — All of these are great ways to improve your daily work experience.
Simple, rejuvenating exercises involve repeating a mantra aloud, whispering silently, combined with finger movements.
Research shows that with this repetitive mind-body exercise, people’s resilience improves while reducing depression, anxiety, and perceived burden.
No matter what type of meditation you do — it might just be focusing on your breathing for a few minutes — you’ll help clear your mind and set a positive tone for your workday.
Exercise and fuel your body
In addition to ignoring building strong mental habits during busy times, it’s easy to overlook basic steps to enhance physical health, such as physical activity and a nutritious diet.
Create a morning ritual that involves exercising, and check this important to-do list off your list before work; waiting until after you get off work to start exercising is risky as you may be more tired, and other things may scramble your attention.
An early morning workout ensures you get it done before work and duties. Be sure to allow plenty of time before and after exercise to eat a healthy breakfast.
You might want to skip it when you have a lot to do, but it’s a fake economy because starting the day with an empty gas tank or a sub-optimal breakfast choice can quickly get tiresome and work with No power.
Start a Gratitude Practice
Bad days start with negative thought patterns, so the best solution is to start the day more consciously.
One of the best morning habits to help you avoid a bad day at work (whether working from home or heading back to the office) is to focus on gratitude. This may sound daunting, but it can be simple.
Rather than letting your thoughts hijack you and lead you in the direction that makes you emotionally low, you can choose what to think about and focus on the things in your life that make you feel happy and grateful.
Your gratitude ritual might include writing about three particularly good things that happened yesterday or reminding you of people and situations in your life to be thankful for.
Read and reflect
Much of what many people end up reading everyday fuels negativity and stress.
Whether reading an annoying email that forces you to do something, surfing social media and seeing a disturbing post, or catching up on a news report that makes you feel anxious, this type of reading is not the place to start your morning good way.
Instead, choose something inspiring to read to help you feel energized and empowered.
Whether it’s a self-help book on a topic of interest, a fiction book that makes you feel good, or a magazine article that guides things in your life you want to think about, conscious reading for fun can help you start your day from a Higher up instead of just absorbing the words that cross your path on an average workday.
Take time in the morning to reflect on what you’ve read and note key points in your journal if it helps.
It might be too hard to complete all five of these morning rituals on a workday, but even doing one or two can help you have a successful workday.
Alternate a few days for each ritual, or do a few over the weekend until you find the right pattern that works best for you.
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